Breast Cancer: Health Services

(asked on 8th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has in place to ensure that the breast cancer imaging and diagnostic workforce has sufficient capacity to manage the backlog of patients resulting from the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 29th June 2020

Despite facing enormous pressure from this unprecedented pandemic, the National Health Service continues to treat cancer patients as a priority.

On 29 April, Simon Stevens and Amanda Pritchard wrote to colleagues across the NHS to set out the expectation that local systems and Cancer Alliances continue to identify ring-fenced diagnostic capacity for cancer and sought assurance from regional cancer Senior Responsible Officers that appropriate arrangements were in place. On 8 June, further guidance was issued on the second phase of the NHS response to COVID-19 for cancer services.

The NHS England and NHS Improvement national cancer team is supporting planning by providing analytical modelling about the local capacity required to catch up on demand for diagnostics and acting as a central link to the independent sector partnership so that local systems can be supported with additional capacity where required.

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